


Caramel Apples

by JusticeAU



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Felix learns what emotions are, Fluff, Hangover, Manuela is a bad influence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24873103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JusticeAU/pseuds/JusticeAU
Summary: Byleth lets loose with Manuela--a little too loose. Felix is stuck with the task of taking care of her.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 2
Kudos: 67





	Caramel Apples

**Author's Note:**

> so yeah anyway I like these two and I like ridiculous pointless fluff. schedule your dentist appointments people. I rated teen because I dunno, alcohol use, bit of swearing, and mentioned (canonical) character death? might add more someday but for now this is stand-alone. kinda tipsy myself writing this tbh. I just have a lot of feelings.

“Oh, professor, you’re a riot! Who would’ve guessed?” Manuela leans back in her chair as she laughs, the slick brown alcohol slipping from her glass onto her lap.

Byleth smiles and hiccups, prompting the two of them to burst out laughing again. Heat rises in her cheeks as the floor swirls beneath her.

“No wonder you—“ _hiccup_ “—indulge in this so much, Professor Manuela.” Byleth picks up her glass, frowning at the empty cup in her hands. “More?”

“That’s all I got on me,” Manuela sets her own empty glass on the wooden table between them. Her head tips back as if she’s stargazing through the ceiling. “You know, professor, I wasn’t sure about you at first. I don’t think any of us were. Seteth was losing his mind over it.” She smiles at the memory. “I can’t help but wonder how Lady Rhea knew.” Pause. “The world works in mysterious ways, doesn’t it?”

Byleth considers this. She’s never been one to question what’s before her—the words Sothis had spoken to her five years prior run through her head occasionally.

_“Are you just a boulder who rolls down whatever hill it’s on? No, a boulder would be smarter than you!”_

Is she really just a boulder? She picks up her glass again as if it had just been magically refilled, frowns at it. Maybe Manuela could somehow create a spell that could poof some more alcohol whenever they wanted. Were that possible, she probably would’ve perfected it long ago.

“What’s on your mind, professor?”

“Am I a boulder?”

Manuela blinks at her, before giggling at the words. “Your figure is far from boulder-y, don’t worry. Not as lovely as mine, but still plenty alluring.”

Byleth shakes her head, perhaps a bit too forcefully as the room almost spins further than she can pull it back. “This is gonna sound silly but, the goddess once told me I’m a boulder. I just roll down whatever hill I’m on. Am I really a boulder?”

Manuela considers this, seemingly unphased by the idea of Byleth being spoken to by the goddess herself. Perhaps those around Byleth had learned to not question anything about her.

“I don’t think you’re a boulder. I think you’re the hill.”

“... Excuse me?”

Manuela shakes her head, as though attempting to knock some of the alcohol-induced fuzz out of her brain. “We’re the boulders, and you’re the hill we roll on. Everyone around you seems to just follow everything you say and do—though it hasn’t failed us yet.”

Byleth opens her mouth to respond. Closes it. Opens it again. Closes.

A sharp knock rattles the door, causing both of them to jump; Byleth loses her grip on the room and slams into the ground.

“Manuela! Are you busy?” Dorothea’s lilting voice settles into the air around them.

“Oh! Um, no, come in!”

Dorothea gently presses the door open. “Oh! Professor! Why are you on the ground? Was that sound you falling? Here, let me help you up.”

Dorothea’s hand is warm in Byleth’s, and before she can stop herself, Byleth pulls it to her cheek.

“So soft…”

“I’m not… interrupting anything, am I?”

“No, no!” Manuela waves away the idea. “We were just wrapping up. Weren’t we, professor?”

Byleth nods into Dorothea’s hands, scrambling to yank herself to her feet. Dorothea pitches forward at the sudden shift but manages to keep her balance as she pulls her professor up. “Professor, have you been… drinking? I wouldn’t think you the type.”

 _Hiccup._ “Just—just casually.” _Hiccup_ again. Brushes the dirt from her coat.

“Ah,” Dorothea furrows her brows together, attempting to gauge the level of worry this situation calls from her. She settles on a 3/10 concern—not terribly bothering, not brushing it off. “Have you two been up all night? It's already sunrise.”

The two professors turn to the gentle sunlight streaming through the window into the infirmary. “Maybe we should call it a night…” Manuela attempts to push herself to her feet and almost takes a dip herself.

“Oh, goodness, you two. Here, let me help you to your rooms.”

Stumbling through the hallway, Dorothea carrying two full-grown women, one on each shoulder, she grunts in exertion.

“Please, Dorothea, I can take care of myself,” Manuela insists, just before her foot catches on a floorboard and she lurches forward.

“I beg to differ, Manuela.” Although, Dorothea admits to herself she’s not sure how she’s going to make sure both of them make it to their rooms without injury. “Oh, Felix! How lovely to see you!”

Felix pauses his brisk pace to look over at the three women across the hall from him.

“What do you want? I need to train.”

Dorothea ignores the scorn in his voice, as she always does. “Could you be a dear and help our lovely professor to her room?”

“Why would I do that?” Squints; leans forward, just a smidge. “Professor, are you, _drunk?”_

Byleth swirls. “Just maybe a little,”

He scoffs, turns back to Dorothea. “Can’t you do it yourself?”

“Do I look like I can handle all this on my own? Professor is, ah, a bit heavier than I expected, and you’re surely the only other person awake at this ungodly hour.”

Felix groans. Why is he considering it? Dorothea blinks at him with those impossibly long eyelashes. “Fine. I’ll do it.” He moves to close the distance between them.

“Oh, _thank_ you, Felix!” She pulls Byleth’s arm from her shoulder, passing her off to Felix. He’s scowling, but he takes it.

“Come on, Manuela,” Dorothea guides her towards the stairs.

“Why did I agree to this?” Felix asks no one in particular as he hikes his professor’s arm over his shoulder, and gingerly puts one hand on her waist. “Is this… okay?” He asks, tentatively, although he knows that she probably wouldn’t object to anything in this state. She smells so… nice. The only time he’s normally this close to her is during training, the two of them slick with sweat and sometimes blood. It’s not a perfumey sort of scent, but of… parchment, maybe? something earthy?, although a second later, he catches the sharp alcohol underneath it.

“Your jacket is so soft,” she mutters.

Felix would rather die than let her see the blush start to creep through his face.

“God, you’re really wasted, aren’t you?” They take a few careful steps forward; this is gonna take a hot minute.

About a minute of silence.

“I don’t do this often,” Byleth attempts to look up at his face but can only make it as far as his left shoulder. “Manuela offered while we were going over some faith tomes and it, um,” she digs through her brain for the words but drops them all on the ground at her feet.

“Yeah, yeah,” Felix deflects, taking a few more steps forward. “You know, I wouldn’t think you the type.”

“Dorothea said the same thing.”

“Hm.”

“Felix.”

Grunt.

“How do you feel about me?”

“E-excuse me?” He grinds to a halt, almost letting the professor crumple to the ground.

Byleth reaches up to pull at the collar of his jacket.

“What the hell are you doing!” This time he does let go of her, though she manages to keep upright.

“You’re lonely. I can tell. Everyone can. Don’t you not want to be?”

Felix can barely stay standing himself. Where is this coming from? If these are the words that churn around in her noggin like a witch’s brew throughout the day, perhaps he’s thankful that they don’t (normally) spill from her lips. “I’m not lonely. I like to be alone. There’s a difference. And I don’t care to change that,” he growls.

Byleth pouts. “No one truly wants to be alone. You can tell yourself whatever you want, but it’s going to eat away at you eventually.” She steps forward, forcing a piercing eye contact with him.

Felix quickly looks away, grimacing, crossing his arms. Shifting his weight to one side, and then the other. How does he respond to that? A part of him already knows this, but not a part that he can bargain with, so he shoves it as far down as it will go in his gut.

“You don’t know me,” he spits out abruptly. Byleth blinks at him, and he has no choice but to continue. “Everyone thinks they can see right through me, that they can see into my head, and they can’t.” A shaky inhale. “Nobody can.”

Byleth pitches forward, wrapping her arms around Felix’s waist before he can dodge her.

“Felix, I’m your professor. I didn’t come back after five years of napping just for you to be as stubborn and aggravating as you always were.”

He tries to respond but chokes on it. Aggravating?

“Not—not aggravating in a bad way, not like _you’re_ aggravating, just like,” she mumbles into his collarbone, “you never listen. You’re just so fucking _stubborn._ Let me in sometime, please. I wanna know what it’s like in there.”

Felix stands stupefied. This is more than the professor normally says in a week, all tumbling out in front of him, words laced with alcohol and... worry. He worries her. He suddenly feels like ripping his heart straight out from his chest.

Sigh. “This is wasting my training time.” He pulls her back up, balancing between holding her upright, as far away from him as he can (not an easy feat) all the way back to her private quarters.

Byleth stumbles face-first into her mattress; she doesn’t move, as though she plans to sleep in exactly that uncomfortable-looking position.

Felix groans. “Come on, you’re gonna regret sleeping like that.” He reaches forward and falters, unsure. He settles on just pulling off her coat and helping her lay down in a more suitable position.

“I meant what I said, Felix. If you keep running like this, you’re gonna crumble.”

He doesn’t respond.

Byleth closes her eyes for a moment; as she opens them, she plans to continue, but it seems as though he’s vanished into thin air.

~~~

_You’re gonna crumble._

He’s not going to crumble.

_Let me in sometime,_

Not in a million years.

_please._

Felix yells in frustration as he throws his sword to the ground. The words his professor had spoken several hours prior still poison his thoughts, throttling, relentless. What could she possibly know? It’s not like she has any idea what he’s been… Oh. Maybe she does know. Watching her father die right before her. The way everyone praised his bravery, his strength, his sacrifice. And it’s not like she opens up anymore than he does—right? Who knows what sort of thoughts she weaves behind that stoic face of hers?

He’s sick of her. Of everyone, everything. So many years later and he stills jolts awake at night to the sound of his brother’s voice. Years and he’s still screaming at his father for glorifying needless death. Years and he still pours his anger and tears into his fighting, determined to carve his own path from his pain, just one step at a time and the corpses won’t be able to catch up to him.

Without really knowing why, Felix moves from the training ground, sword abandoned. His feet carry him across campus to the dining hall.

~~~

Byleth groans, pulling her pillow over her head. Oh god, _what?,_ pain shooting through her head, stomach churning, _ugh,_

A sudden sharp knock at the door. She groans again, probably not loud enough for the knocker to hear but they push through the door anyway.

Felix steps in, carrying… something? in his arms. The harsh light melts Byleth’s eyes and pierces through her brain.

“Here. Eat this.” He dumps the armful onto her desk.

Byleth rubs her eyes with her knuckles and attempts to peer through the harsh brightness.

Felix is standing before her, arms crossed. She can’t make out his face but she would bet gold he’s glaring straight through her.

He shifts his weight.

_What am I doing here?_

“What are you doing here?”

Felix grimaces. “Dorothea asked me to help,” he shoves the excuse onto the floor between them, not exactly a lie but not the answer the question deserved. “She wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Byleth pushes through the fog in her head to try and piece together the night prior. The morning? Fragments float around her, some just out of reach, and the ones she can grab don’t quite fit together. Scraps of Manuela and Dorothea, the smell of freshly washed laundry and weapon maintenance oil. Dirt beneath her feet, floorboards, grass, floorboards again. There's something floating through there that she can’t quite grasp.

“So eat it. You’re gonna feel even shittier than you do now if you don’t.” Felix kicks the ground with the toe of his boot.

Byleth crawls from the mattress in the direction of her desk, plates of food laid out on top of curriculum parchments. She hoists herself into a chair and takes a careful bite of some kind of roasted vegetable—it’s yellow. Maybe? She doesn’t particularly care at this point.

“I thought we weren’t supposed to take food from the dining hall,” between bites.

“I told them it was for you. They made an exception,” Felix glowers into the corner of the room, occasionally stealing glances toward the professor. Byleth takes a few more bites, tentatively, as though it might hurt her, although with the way her stomach feels it’s not exactly out of the question.

“It’s not like I had anything better to do,” he adds.

“Not even your morning training that was probably postponed due to me?”

No response.

“I appreciate it,” Byleth hands him the compliment, gently, knowing that he would prefer to toss it out the window.

Still no response.

Chew.

Silence.

“Professor.”

She peers over out of the corner of her eyes, green glow boring directly into him.

“Did you.. mean what you said?” Stop talking. Don’t say that. She probably doesn’t even remember. “When you said I’m… aggravating?” For the love of _Sothis, stop fucking talking._

Byleth considers this. “Did I say that?”

He glares.

“I guess I did.” Pause.

Byleth pushes herself from her chair, trying to ignore the pounding in her head and the dryness in her throat, and grabs onto Felix’s sleeve. What is she doing? _God, Felix, what have you done, what have you gotten yourself into, what_

She puts his hand on her cheek. Something about this feels familiar to her, although his palm feels positively hot and slick against her skin. His expression's something between shock and excruciating pain. She holds the razor-sharp eye contact between them, daring Felix to break it. He doesn’t.

Byleth pulls his arm behind her, bringing them together, putting her face against his chest. He was so tense that one wrong breath would shatter him. Familiar, again... 

The memories come slamming back into her. Clinging to his shoulder, stumbling ahead, spilling her thoughts out to him in a way she never had before. In the five years she slumbered, it felt as though something in her brain had started to shift. Feelings arising that she had never come close to feeling before.

“I care. That’s why it’s aggravating. You don’t know what it’s like to care for someone so greatly and have them push you away.”

Felix bristles. “I know what it’s like to care and have them ripped away.”

She shakes her head. “Not the same. I didn’t have a choice with my father. You didn’t have a choice with... We don’t choose to lose them. You’re here, in front of me, blood in your veins and heart in your hands, choosing to leave us all in the dark. To leave _me.”_

How the hell does he respond to this? After a decade of not letting anyone in, he’s not sure how to open up again. Rust chewing away at his insides for ten years.

“My heart doesn’t beat.” She blurts out.

“I—excuse me?”

“Never has. Ever since I was born.”

He takes this statement and tosses it, back and forth, unsure of what to do with it. Doesn’t beat? How is that possible?

“Why are you telling me this.” Not a question. A statement, meant to imply that the confession was wrongly placed.

Byleth shakes her head. “Rhea has something to do with it, somehow. Seteth knows why but he won’t tell me. Says that only part of the truth will do more harm than good.” Pause. “When we rescue Rhea from the capital I can finally have the truth before me.”

“There’s no guarantee that Rhea is in Enbarr. Seteth said it himself. Only rumors.”

“I know she’s there.”

More silence. Although when it comes to the two of them, it’s not exactly abnormal. Neither of them are good with words—although, maybe it’s so much that she’s not good with words, as much as she just doesn’t deem them necessary.

“You’re stranger than anyone I’ve ever known. Stranger than the boar wearing a human face, than the archbishop who took form of a goddamn _dragon_ five years ago and _nobody_ talks about it. Your hair and eyes turn _bright green_ after being banished to hell and you don’t even skip a beat. Your fucking _heart doesn’t beat._ Who the hell are you?”

Shakes her head again. “I don’t really know.” So soft, so quiet, the words could hang on a spiderweb. “I don’t know.” Is she crying?

Felix, in a strange rush of affection, wraps his arms around her, hands resting on her upper back. They remain like this for several precious moments, some raw tension still hanging in the air but mostly masked by the sense of solidarity. Two souls, lost in the world, love and happiness torn away from them time and time again. Fate could certainly be cruel. But it also had brought them together.

“I like that your eyes look like caramel.”

“Well yours look like… apples. The green kind.”

Byleth chuckles. It sounds so foreign, yet so… comfortable. It reminds Felix of Jeralt, how it would hang so substantially in the air around them. She tilts her face upwards a touch, brushing her lips across his neck. “Is that a compliment?” breath on his skin. It makes him shiver.

Felix starts to relax, ever so slightly, but he‘s not sure how to react to this. It feels... chilled, yet warm. Lovely. So consoling and caring and precious and

“I suppose it is.” Against every tight rubber band in his body, resisting, trying to pull him away from her, winding tight through him ever since the tragedy almost ten years ago, he puts his own lips against the top of her head.

Holding her close like this, Felix can feel the strange frigidity drifting off of her. How does she not freeze to death? Perhaps when you’re born without real blood flowing through your veins your body just adapts to it. He has so many more questions than he did the day prior, but that train of thought is so far removed from the current moment, that it doesn’t matter, might not ever matter. It feels as though their lives have been leading up to this moment.

“It feels like... this is where we’re meant to be.” Byleth murmurs.

“Funny." His voice is so low he can hardly hear it himself. "I was just thinking the same thing.”


End file.
